We touched a bit on this last time; before you hit send, ask yourself: why this person, why now?

We don’t have to lie to ourselves, often the answer is: “because I need to hit target” or “my AE told me to”. But that’s not going to cut through the noise, your prospects are getting bombarded with messages. If you don’t have a clear, value-driven why, you’re just another notification.

Don’t worry though, we already did the thinking for you. Here are a few why’s you can leverage in your outreach today:

Tried and True Why Angles

The Classic Industry Insight:

When all things fail, The Industry Excuse will always be there for you;

“Noticed you’re a {role} at {company}. Been hearing from other {role} leaders in the {industry} industry challenges with {pain point}. How are you tackling this at the moment? Would love to exchange perspectives with you on that”

The Competitor Angle:

Great to leverage if you have one of their direct competitors as a customer.

“Currently working with {competitor}, which has a similar business structure as {company}, within solving {pain point}. How are you dealing with this? Happy to share what’s working with {competitor}”

The Event Hook:

Good to add to your weekly to-do list to make sure you’re building meetings pipeline for the next quarter. Once there’s interest or registration, it’s much easier to start conversations that lead to a meeting.

“Wanted to make sure you received an invite to our {event} for {role}. {short description of the event}. Let me know if you’ll be able to make it—you’d make a great addition to the mix”

The Referral:

leverage previous meetings or cold calls with the prospect’s colleagues. Even if this was a year ago, any warmth will make the prospect feel a bit more comfortable to lower their guard. Or at least to not hang up on the first “Hi this is Carol from The BDR Community”.

“Had a meeting with a colleague of yours and they mentioned it’d be good to bring you in on the conversations. Does this ring a bell? We discussed {pain point} and how we’re helping {customer use case}. Would love to catch you up over a digital coffee”

• ⚠️ Avoid mentioning the colleague’s name especially if you’re reaching out to their manager. Only mention it if you’ve asked for permission or if you think the relationship with the first prospect won’t be affected negatively—long term trust > short term meeting.

The Previous Job:

If your prospect recently joined a new company and used your product in their old one, this is gold.

“Saw you recently joined {new company}, congrats 🙂 Correct me if I’m wrong, you were using {your company} at {old company}. How did you like it? What’s your new way of working? Would love to explore if we can be of help to you and your new team”

The Spray, Find God, then Pray:

Yes, the Spray and Pray Approach is outdated; the approach where you send automated, generic emails to a large amount of prospects hoping that someone, somewhere is interested.

But what about when you’ve got zero intel and no intent data?

• In those cases, send no more than approx 7 emails per account (to avoid getting blocked) then monitor opens and clicks. Follow up with more personalization to those who showed intent.

This acts as a funnel to focus on prospects more likely to reply + you can leverage this in your cold call “just sent you an email and thought it’d be easier to follow up with a call” 😉